"If this weren't a videogame, I'd be on my way to prison".
Gosh, but isn’t Limited Run Games on a tear? The company’s announced a remaster of your favourite PS1 demo and a spiritual successor to a series of Zelda games that was probably better off dead, but that’s just not enough. Alongside all that, we’re also getting a remaster of, wait, hang on, let me make sure I have this right, Gex? Yes, it says here the studio’s remastering Gex. Do you ever get the feeling the world’s left you behind?
LRG is set to remaster the entire Gex oeuvre, consisting of 1995’s Gex, 1998’s Gex: Enter the Gecko, and 1999’s Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko. All three are probably most well-known as PS1 games—though they came out elsewhere too—and starred a wisecracking lizard-slash-spy as he platformed his way to victory. The first game was a 2D affair, but both sequels were full-on 3D.
It also featured a dizzying array of voice actors for the main character, a TV-loving gecko named, you guessed it, Gex. He was voiced by Dana Gould in the US games, but was played by Leslie Phillips and Danny John-Jules (Cat from Red Dwarf, for those in the know) in the UK versions of Gex 2 and 3. LRG hasn’t said whether it’ll be reusing the old VA or mixing up some new stuff.
Like the Tomba remaster, the reborn Gex trilogy will run on LRG’s Carbon Engine, and looks to be coming to Steam. It is an odd choice. The Gex games are a relic of a different era, a time of platform mascots and endless pop-culture gags, and a lot of the characters’ quips reference only the finest TV and celeb gossip of the late ’90s. Hell, the entire character is a riff on pre-Daniel Craig James Bond, so I’m not entirely convinced he’ll translate that well to the grimdark future of 2023. You can get a taste of its humour in this slightly discomfiting compilation of its many, many voice lines.
But I suppose LRG isn’t remastering the Gex games because it thinks the character is just what the Zoomers have been waiting for. I suspect that somewhere out there lies a sleeper cabal of inveterate Gex-heads, eager to relive their late ’90s glory days spent in the character’s company. Good for them, I say, but I’m not sure old Gex has much to offer the rest of us.
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